Time to stop looters, mayor says

Felicity Barringer and Jere Longman, New York Times News ServiceCHICAGO TRIBUNE

In a city shut down for business, the Rite-Aid at Oak Street and South Carrollton Avenue was wide open Wednesday. Someone had stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks, peeled up the security gate and smashed through the front door.

The young and the old walked in empty-handed and walked out with armfuls of candy, sunglasses, notebooks, soda and whatever else they could need or find. No one tried to stop them.

Across New Orleans, the rule of law, like the city's levees, could not hold out after Hurricane Katrina. The desperate and the opportunistic took advantage of an overwhelmed police force and helped themselves to food and water, as well as television sets, sporting goods and firearms.

Many people with property brought out their own shotguns and sidearms. Many without brought out shopping carts. The two groups have moved warily in and out of each other's paths for the past three days, and the rising danger has kept even some rescue efforts from proceeding.

Because New Orleans police were preoccupied with search and rescue missions, sheriff's deputies and state police from around Louisiana began to patrol the city, some holding rifles as they rolled through the streets in armored vehicles.

But on Wednesday night, the mayor ordered about 1,500 city police, nearly the entire force, back to traditional roles.

The looters "are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas, hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Mayor C. Ray Nagin told The Associated Press.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she was "furious" at the looting. "What angers me the most is disasters tend to bring out the best in everybody, and that's what we expected to see," Blanco said at a news conference. "Instead, it brought out the worst."

All sizes and types of stores, from Wal-Mart to the Rite-Aid to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, turned into bazaars of free merchandise.

Some frightened homeowners took security into their own hands.

John Carolan said he was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard. "We want that generator," one said.

"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered." He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."

Though no one excused the stealing, many officials were careful not to depict every looter as a petty thief.

"Had New York been closed off on 9/11, who can say what they would have done?" said Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, vice president of the New Orleans City Council. "When there's no food, no water, no sanitation, who can say what you'd do?"

One woman outside a Sav-a-Center on Tchoupitoulas Street was loading food, soda, water, bread, peanut butter and canned food into the trunk of a car.

"Yes, in a sense it's wrong, but survival is the name of the game," said the woman, who declined to identify herself. "I've got six grandchildren."

Jimmy Field, one of the state's five public service commissioners, said supply and repair trucks were being slowed down by people looking for food and water. Some drivers would not go on without police escorts.

"Right now we're hoping for more federal assistance to get the level of civil disturbance down," he said.

One police officer was shot Tuesday trying to stop looting, but was expected to survive.

On Tuesday, the Louisiana State Police sent in 200 troopers specially trained in riot control, said Lt. Lawrence McLeary, a spokesman for the state police.

The young man and his friends left, continuing the glare. A few minutes later, they returned and mouthed quiet oaths at Cosma, and his friend Art DePodesta, an Army veteran, who was carrying a shotgun and a pistol.

Cosma stared back, saying nothing. Between the two sides, a steady trickle of looters came and went, barely giving any of them a look.